Waking Up Beside You
by Odyssion
Summary: There are some questions to which the answers are as elusive as shadows. [Sasuke x Itachi]


**Waking Up Beside You**

_Disclaimer:_ This is a non-profit story written for entertainment purposes only. All characters of Naruto belong to their respective owners.

_Author's Notes:_ This thing has gone through so many revisions. My initial idea came to me in the form of a sentence (which is now the summary), and from that frame I tried to create a coherent piece. First I set it to the translated lyrics of "Tightrope", which is the ending song to the Saiyuki: Requiem movie, but then the phrase "waking up beside you" came into my head, and lo and behold, that's the title of a song by a group called Stabbing Westward (I realized this while browsing some old files – a friend had sent the song to me a long time ago). So I scrapped "Tightrope" (it's an awesome song, and I plan to use it for something, but it just doesn't work as well here), and used "Waking up beside you" as my inspiration. Written from Sasuke's POV, this was also meant to be a companion piece to the later chapters of my other Naruto fic, _Twisted Desires_. However, since I'm inspired now, I want to write and post it now. Mainly, it's just Sasuke after his fight with Naruto but before Orochimaru, because he's bumped into Itachi. I don't want to give away everything, but it might get a little confusing, so… just think Itachi and Sasuke… alone… in a dark forest… and giving a whole new meaning to "brotherly love".

Yeah, see, my yaoi mind lets NOTHING go.

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**Waking Up Beside You**

The question I find myself asking most often is the puzzling one of why.

Why did you murder them? Why did you let me live? Why do you continue to torture me? Why, why, why…

Makes 'because' a pretty insignificant answer. Even so, I tried to put together the fragments of unsolvable truths into some semblance of sense.

You had said yourself that the clan was weak, and that you assassinated them to prove your own skills. The part of me that's not already too queasy to talk any more wonders what you proved. The part of me that's screaming like the child I was has long pissed his pants.

And yet, something tells me that when you said, "the clan was weak", you meant that the clan made **you** weak. See, I prefer to think of it as a sordid act of love – you cared too much, and it was becoming a liability. Thus, they had to die. Being the genius that you are, I'm sure you know there's countless other ways of problem solving, but I guess this seemed easiest.

Wait… what?

See, I said semblance of sense, not sense itself. I would never, could never, understand you fully. As I lay here, bruised and broken and not even contemplating escape, another question pops into my head. What in the world made you choose the time you did? It wasn't really dark; you could've killed everyone silently in the dead of night and slipped away unnoticed. But instead you opted for the tactically unsound approach, revealing yourself as the murderer and performing your lurid act as the mid-afternoon sun bore witness. How, may I ask, does that make any sort of sense? As I see your shadow quietly returning from the concealment of the forest, I vaguely wonder where you've been. It's fruitless to ask, so I keep on with my musings.

The most puzzling why of all, the one I really can't fathom, is why, of all the people in the clan, did you leave me alive?

Your eyes pass over me stoically and you silently sit down on your side of the fire. The night is more than chilly, but it's suddenly very hot. In a wild fit of fancy, I'm afraid you'll know what I'm thinking – afraid you'll pluck my thoughts from the crevices of my cauterized mind and berate me for my silliness. It made no sense, but you always had a bad habit of rubbing off on me. Was I just not good enough for you? You said I wasn't worth killing, probably because I was too weak. Those words, even in that instant of my most unadulterated fear and loathing, had cut me deeply. In your shadow, I had tried to grow – but even the most vigilant plant needs some form of sunlight. I guess you knew that, but instead of moving your shadow away, you instead blocked out the sun and uprooted me from my soil. I'd like to think that you left me alive because you loved me. Hopefully, you still do. But that fantasy is born of a flamboyant imagination, and diminishes (by the day) faster than a bowl of ramen in front of a hungry Naruto. Am I not allowed to be a cynic?

I can feel your eyes on my body, and I focus my attention on anything but you. Languidly, my gaze travels to the Akatsuki cloak you habitually wear, tracing its swirl-shaped patterns with my eyes. Darkest blue-black and crimson red… my eyes and yours. Were we never good enough for you, Itachi? It may not have been much, but we had loved you. This criminal organization of thieves and vagabonds could only care for your power; true love, true adoration like the kind I once held for you – that has no price.

You get up now, and move towards me in your customary manner. As you sit down beside me, eyes as impassive as a broken stone, I can see the future; I know what is to come, and only one thought flickers in my hazy mind.

I wonder what it's like, waking up beside you.

I've woken up beside you before, of course – in the days of our youth, in the days of our everything. It's not quite the same nowadays. In the days when I was still afraid of monsters in the dark, your bed was so soothing and safe. When dawn finally arrived to drive away the shadows of my fears, your smiling face would be framed against the bloody sky. Why did that hue of sickening death, always behind you whenever I awoke, never enlighten me to your impending crime? If I had figured it out, I could have warned them, could have told them to be wary of you. That same blood sky had been behind you on _that_ morning, too. The rational side of my mind explains that they never would've listened, and it's right: who would listen to a jealous 8-year-old little boy describing the supposedly bloodthirsty nature of his prodigy of a brother? Of course they wouldn't have listened, but at least there wouldn't be all this guilt, this guilt of being the only one alive. I'd read about "survivor's guilt" before, and it was always such an ostensibly stupid thing. But now I understand; now I understand it all too well.

Still, that doesn't explain this increasingly maniacal urge of mine to see your face when I wake up. To feel the same warmth that had spread through me when you scared the monsters away, to know that deep inside that impenetrable mask that exploits my willing body, there's some form of emotion. As meagre, as insignificant as it may be, I want to see it. I want to wake up beside you.

Maybe that's why I can't kill you. Your lips meet mine and dominate me, heated and intense. You're always so cautious, so careful to be gone long before I'm ever awake; I can tell because the vague indent beside me is forever stone cold, and your scent only faintly lingers on the wind. It's indescribable, that scent, and terribly electrifying. I'm drawn to you in too many ways to extricate myself. I just want to see your face, because maybe you can chase these different monsters away from me. I can remember how it used to be, remember how _you_ used to be… and then I can forget. I'll forget everything but the fact that you're a murderer, so that when my kunai is kissing that delicious throat of yours, it'll consummate the deal. The perfect sky will be torn to shreds when your blood paints the clouds the most vivid scarlet.

But I file these plans away in storage for the moment as your hands have found me again. I know that I cannot resist you, now or ever; it's too much to ask of any human being. I know that within minutes you will have me at your mercy, and my fingers will scrape futility across the stony dirt, leaving the scars of our passion. Idly, as I always do, I wonder if this coming dawn will be the one where you relent to my secret wishes, where you grant my desires without question. So long as I never wake up to your beautifully smiling face, as gentle as it was on that fateful morning and every other just like it, I'll never forget. Even the feel of you inside me, this consuming feeling of total absolution, cannot make me forget it at all.

But even if I never get to see your face again, I'll have to forget eventually. Even if I can never turn away, time will be the tourniquet of my sins. I simply know, and it must be true. I _will_ kill you… someday.

As if to answer my prayers, you thrust yourself deliriously into my inviting body. I shut out the swirling colours of the world by closing my eyes, and hope that this is the last thing I'll ever feel. In this, everything is clear; I **will** kill you.

The realization is like a chasm opening beneath my feet. Suddenly I realize…

If I'm lucky, that'll be the day that you kill me, too.

**END**

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_AN:_ Ending feels a bit rushed to me, but I still like the way it turned out (overall). If inspired, I might write an Itachi "reply" to this story, but we'll wait and see. As always, comments are greatly appreciated. 


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